


Kyli Im Hethevits

by commanderquill



Category: Batman (Comics), Robin: Son of Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Mother-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 15:14:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17685908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commanderquill/pseuds/commanderquill
Summary: Damian al Ghul was raised to take pride in his heritage, his name, and his strength. He doesn’t understand the need to use manipulation to obtain what he wants, no matter how many times his mother attempts to teach him.





	Kyli Im Hethevits

**Author's Note:**

> This was written from an RP between me and Lightninghope. She was Talia, I was Damian. Big thanks to her for the permission to rewrite and post!
> 
> The location was undisclosed on purpose, the currency is not in dollars and the language spoken is Armenian. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> (Translation of the title is "Walk Behind Me")

Shining through the valleys of the Caucasus mountains, the light of the setting sun stretches its golden tendrils onto the heads of those mingling in a small market. Wares of all different origins and kinds stretch down the road, curving around an impromptu bend like the lazy tail of a snake. The soft, barely distinguishable accent of a beautiful but forgettable woman sweeps just barely over the din, accompanied by an irritated vendor trying his best to slip a high price to a foreigner who isn’t falling for it.

“Pomegranate is worth half that,” says a short man who makes up in volume what he doesn’t in height. “Don’t let this brother fool you, dear!” he thunders loudly to the woman, whose face wipes itself free of expression.

“I was not,” she tells him, pointedly, and looks back to the vendor, who scowls at her. “If you will not give me a fair price, I will go elsewhere.”

And so the conversation continues, and eventually the woman moves to the next vendor with a pomegranate worth more than what she paid.

The child at her side remains pouting at the ground throughout it all.  
  
"Stop making that face," the woman, known here as Shakeh but known elsewhere as one Talia al Ghul, hisses to the child once she finally moves away from the next booth, a new shawl wrapped around her slender shoulders. “You must understand my actions, why it is I play nice with these people, strive to look like them and talk like them.”

The market, although small, overflows with everything from every corner of the mountains and beyond, fresh baked goods and heavily salted cheeses and fruits rapidly ripening under the melting sun on one end while dresses, shawls, jewelry, instruments, chess boards, backgammon boards, and every little touristy trinket imaginable cover the other.

“This is your first lesson,” she whispers to her son, who stares stubbornly up at her with all the mien of a child attending to an undesirable errand. She looks impassively back until he nods and adjusts his posture to something more attentive.

Talia drifts to the next vendor and selects a dress, beautiful by a commoner’s standards, although she’d no doubt seen more impressive work many times before. Her son watches on as his mother haggles the price, the exchange interspersed with friendly humor and all the seemingly appropriate respect even as she argues. An excruciatingly long fifteen minutes later, his mother walks away satisfied, a new dress placed delicately into the bag at her elbow with a nazar boncuğu for protection. She turns back to him.

  
Somehow, his back becomes impossible straighter under her careful eyes. Everything she gives her attention to captures it complete -- sometimes it’s as if she can look into his very soul.

"I simply do not understand the purpose," the child, one Damian al Ghul, protests. "You claim that I must learn how to speak to all people, but I _do_ know how to speak to all people. I would simply rather do so as myself. To pretend to be someone else, is that not a disgrace to my name?" Damian is of the opinion that it’s unreasonable he should ever hide his title, his heritage. It commands respect already -- why should he conceal what people already pay heed to?

But his mother doesn’t agree. “It isn’t a disgrace to learn how to speak to people,” she corrects immediately. “You only bring shame to your name when you hide your name in shame. Taking a different story, a different personality, this is _manipulation._ Your father is exceptionally skilled at it. What I do here is _nothing,_ it is but the foundations of the craft you will later hone to perfection. But, of course, even a prince must begin somewhere.”

He doesn’t care _what_ his father is skilled at. Perhaps that’s what endeared the man to his mother, but not to Damian. The Batman doesn’t even kill his enemies. What has he for Damian to respect, aside from Mother’s respect, an honor few ever achieve?

The fact that he’s without it himself is… irrelevant.

She continues: ”Why did I not tell her my name and threaten her until I got the price I wanted, little one? What if we were on a mission, or we were in hiding, can you understand it that way?”

  
Manipulation. Subtlety. Both traits Damian's told he should have but loathes to learn. He knows his mother would like him to have them, to know how to fight with words as she does. Furthermore, he knows it's unwise to continually question that decision -- particularly if she's mentioned the father he has yet to meet, but who dangles over his head as an unachievable standard anyway. And yet... "I could steal anything she has," he declares. "She has no secrets she might lie of if I were to threaten her instead.”

To anyone else, his mother would look serenely unperturbed, but Damian can see the exasperation written in every line of her body. He fights the urge to shrink away. She offers no response before she turns and strides behind the main throng of the market-goers, into an open space behind some of the booths. The vendors cast her wary glances, but Damian’s no longer thinking about them when he’s suddenly hoisted onto her hip. His breath catches.

His mother deigns to coddle him so rarely he could count all the occasions on one hand.  
  
"You would expect to steal a woman’s dress unnoticed, as a young boy in an open market?” she says, voice as hard as it was on the street, and Damian can detect a hint of mocking. Embarrassment sweeps over him. “My little prince, you would draw attention. The reason we do these things is to not draw attention. Like this, you are but a panther in the night, a fish in the river. You slide through people's minds and they forget you. That merchant saw a lovely woman and her young son, visiting for a benign reason and buying an equally benign ware. She will forget me by tomorrow, if she hasn't already." She allows him the barest smile and his world is reduced only to memorizing the sight, even if he doesn’t realize it in the moment, and he melts against her, so slightly he hopes she doesn’t notice. The subtle smell of her perfume fills his nose.  
  
“Besides, all of this is a great deal less effort. Screaming or stealing to get my way would create such a mess.”

It’s a foreign concept to Damian -- learning _not_ to draw attention. Every day in the palace he calls home is a fight for attention. Of course he’s never truly without it, but he must still be the best of them to earn it, he must learn the quickest and never, ever, allow himself to fall short into _mediocre._ That would be synonymous with _failure._  
  
But it’s what he knows, and he prefers it. Being unobtrusive can’t possibly be less effort when he’s never known the craft. For him, it’s a different kind of fight, performed using muscles he’s never noticed, and it’s far more exhausting. "Yes, Mother," he responds dutifully anyway. He hopes, against his better judgement, that his mother is wrong in this and he'll never have to use such a foreign skill.

Despite his acquiescence, his mother’s lips turn down with displeasure. That disappointment simmers low beneath his skin like millions of tiny thorns, and he wraps his arms around her neck tighter. She absently hoists him higher on her hip and looks off into the middle distance, as if determining what she should possibly do with him. The fist around his heart squeezes.  
  
"We will return to the market. You will pick something out and haggle with the vendor, but you will _not_ yell or threaten them. Understood?" When Damian nods, she walks back to the market. Much to his surprise, however, she keeps her hold on him the entire way.

No longer in control of his legs, he’s left to watch another booth approach with dread. It’s a different one from before, a little ways down, and he looks down at the wares completely unimpressed. Not only does he not actually want anything on the table, but he’s at a loss for how to proceed, and his mother doesn’t do so much as acknowledge her orders again.

It’s several seconds before he can bring himself to unwind his arms from her neck. She lets him go instantly, no doubt having waited on his cue, and the loss punches him in the chest. He knows she won’t initiate another hug any time soon.

He walks around the booth. There’s no plan to his actions, but maybe if he acts like there is…

It’s when he gets to the furthest end of the booth that a familiar sound drifts to his ears, one he’s never heard outside his lessons. He’s already being watched so he follows it without warning, although the vendor voices her concern to his back.

He weaves his way through the short stretch of crowd until he reaches another booth, a plain one with only a shawl strung over the top to announce its existence. He waits politely until the ladies at the booth stop talking, their foreign language sweeping over him and confirming that, yes, he thought correctly.

They aren't speaking the language of the market, but they must know it if they're selling their wares here. Still, if he speaks _their_ tongue instead, he'll be all the more kindly received. It's the universal constant -- speaking someone's tongue is a sign of respect for them, no matter which tongue is more appropriate to be spoken at the time. When one woman meets his eye, he says softly: "Neroghotyun." _Excuse me._  
  
The second woman stops talking, the one with her hair done up elaborately behind her head, and gives him her full attention. The second looks surprised, but the first is smiling softly. "Barev tzez," he says with all the hesitation and uncertainty he feels, multipled by ten. _Greetings._

Both of their smiles widen. "Barev," the second woman greets kindly. Before she can continue, Damian gestures to the beautiful bag he saw from the other booth, woven in reds and grays in perfectly symmetrical, elaborate geometric shapes.

"Ays byusaq shat siroun e... garogh em hartsnem inchqan garje?" _This bag is beautiful... May I ask how much it costs?_ As he speaks, the beginning of a plan formulates in his mind. He fights to keep his posture meek, his voice shy.

  
The second woman looks no less amused, and it takes all he has not to bristle. They're amused because of his accent, he reminds himself, and he did that on purpose. With his accent, he sounds... cute. It'll win him favor. "Hisoon hazar," she says apologetically. _Fifteen thousand._ "Engeroohi unes nvires iren?" she teases. _Do you have a girlfriend to gift it to?_  
  
He grimaces dramatically at the price. "Ach," he exclaims, frustrated. "Voch, im myrikis sirats gouyneren en, byts... ah... yete bithi imanas, norek enk aystegh yev aynqan gumar chenk estatsel. Myrikus shat... shat tkhur e ays verchi tharinaruh... im hyrikus..." _No, it's my mother's favorite colors, but... well... if you must know, we're new to this area, and we haven't had the chance to earn much money. She has been very... very sad, these few years... my father..._ Immediately their faces fall, and they exchange a sympathetic look between them.  "Mi ayn goosim mi hath lav nvar gthnayim ir hamar," he adds quietly. _I just wished to find something nice for her._  
  
The first woman asks, softer than before, "Vortheghitsek yekel?" _Where do you come from?_  
  
"Sarin myus qoghmits." _The other side of the mountain._ Their faces fall even further. Good. They know the area. "Gyughi gyank githek shat djvar e... Gartsumayink..." _You must know the life in a village is very hard... we thought..._ Damian trails off with a shuffle of his feet. He takes one last longing look at the bag, then tells them, "Gnerek vor khangaretsi." _I'm sorry for bothering._ He walks away, dejected.  
  
"Wait!" the first woman calls, in the common language this time. Damian's secretly grateful. He hates having an accent. It makes him sound uneducated. He looks back at her, and she lowers her voice with a smile. "Do you have eight thousand?"  
  
When he returns to his mother five minutes later, he presents her with the bag and still twelve thousand leftover from what she gave him stuffed inside. He forces himself to look her in the eye. "I obtained this for almost half the price it was originally," he declares.

She examines the bag but doesn’t check how many coins remain inside. She must have overheard the exchange. When she looks back up, it’s with a glint of approval, and it can’t be at the quality of the bag because it’s nothing compared to what she already has, so it must be for him.

“Good job.”

Warmths crests Damian’s cheeks and he preens proudly. The task was distasteful, but he can’t have asked for more from the outcome. His mother tucks the purse away into her larger bag, carefully, a memento. Then she curls a finger under his chin to meet his eyes, and whatever she sees there she must deem satisfactory because she pulls away only to take her son’s hand in hers. As she leads him away, she gives it a careful squeeze.

It’s one of their better days.


End file.
